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Greg Jalbert, who grew up in Fort Kent, is at work on a memoir, “On Becoming a Maine Guide,” about growing up in a wilderness family along the Allagash River.
On April Fool’s Day 1919, Maine Gov. Carl Milliken signed a law to prohibit the use of French in public schools, except in language classes. The law was no joke. No laughing matter. I believe it was one of the most racist and culturally repressive acts in our nation’s history — a government-led campaign of forced assimilation and cultural extermination targeting French Catholic immigrants as an existential threat to English-speaking, Christian-Protestant Americanism.
Milliken’s law culminated 70 years of anti-French Catholic sentiment, simmering since the 1850s when waves of Québécois immigrants arrived in New England mill towns. Writing about my St. John Valley ancestors — both Québécois and Acadiens — during a visit in the late 1850s, a southern Maine newspaper editor captured the prevailing racist mood: “They are generally ignorant and unambitious … a peculiar people, distinct in tastes, habits and aspirations from the Anglo-Saxon race.” Editorial boards across Maine and beyond, including The New York Times, warned of the need for forced assimilation to prevent what they imagined: an armed French Catholic insurrection leading to the annexation of Maine by Québec.
These absurd fears fueled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Maine. By 1925, Klan membership surged to over 150,000 — representing 23 percent of the state’s population. Beyond hooded ghouls marching through public streets, the Klan pressured school boards to fire French-speaking teachers, lobbied against Catholic officeholders, pushed for restrictive voting laws, and worked to dismantle parish-centered communities.
The 1919 law ushered in the era of “Silent Schoolyards.” Children were terrified to speak French for fear of public shaming, humiliation, or physical punishment. A culture that once sang, joked, and prayed in French was forced into silence — not just at school, but eventually at home, where English became a habit. The campaign succeeded in severing the cultural bridge between generations, including our oral history. That trauma didn’t vanish when the law was essentially repealed in the 1960s. It still haunts the state today.
In 2020, Sen. Susan Collins claimed, “I do not believe systemic racism is a problem in the state of Maine.” But the historical record — and the lived experiences of generations of Québécois and Acadiens families — tell a very dark story: one of state-sanctioned repression, exclusion, and cultural violence.
I now live in Colorado, but I grew up in Fort Kent, where French flowed through shops, restaurants, churches, ballfields, and schoolyards, when administrators quietly ignored the law. My father, a lawyer, conducted more than 75 percent of his client conversations in French. That world is fading fast.
We owe it to our ancestors — millworkers, loggers, farmers, and laborers — who pulled themselves up and sacrificed to give us a better life, to remember that their silence was not chosen. It was imposed by law. We honor them now by speaking out. By remembering.
The cruel irony of April Fool’s Day 1919 should not be lost on us. Gov. Milliken’s law was no joke — it was a calculated act of cultural extermination. If Maine is serious about welcoming immigrants and celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion, today, we must first acknowledge this legacy. Not with laughter, but with honesty. Not with denial, but with reckoning — the kind Gov. Janet Mills has demanded, even as President Donald Trump tries to erase DEI with the same fear-driven cruelty that once banned French from our classrooms.
